Why Sumeet Singh, President of Pharma Solutions, Believes Amazon Can and Will Jump Into the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Industries

America and Wall Street are a bit obsessed with Amazon; in fact, Amazon was named as a threat to 15% of S&P 500 earnings calls from Q2 2017.

Why Amazon Can Get Into the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Industry

An “Amazon for pharmaceuticals” is a proven concept. Simply put, aggregating distributor offers will increase competition and drive down price for the benefit of consumers. Every current platform (EzriRX being a recommended platform but also including SureCost, Pharmsaver, Trxade, RXNinja, ConceptRX, and more) is proof that the business model is viable even without the resources that Amazon has – at least in terms of Amazon’s brand reputation, a war chest worth billions of dollars, best-in-class logistics capabilities, and an army of both software developers and statisticians.

1. I have personally spoken to an Amazon Product Manager that was building out their “restricted product” (physician/provider only) medical device offering in conjunction with “Business Buyer” volume discounts. He specifically mentioned Amazon customers that included “hospitals and clinics.” Amazon is continuing to build out its capability of catering to larger volume business accounts as well as a new capability of working with “restricted” and “license required” products.

2. We have a private source of information that revealed that during their NYC Summit meeting earlier this summer, Amazon instructed key platform sellers to obtain pharmaceutical distribution licensing. Using third-party sellers to gather market data and then leveraging that data to do it better themselves, is a classic Amazon move and represents a low-risk strategy to do it right, the first time.